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Good news out of Baghdad: the Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4 billion in US reconstruction funds, has finally set a goal it can meet. Sure, electricity is below prewar levels, the streets are rivers of sewage and more Iraqis have been fired than hired. But now the PMO has contracted with British mercenary firm Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and" — get this — "embarrassment." I don't know whether Aegis will succeed in protecting PMO employees from violent attack, but embarrassment? I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because, clearly, they have no shame.

In Baghdad, every encounter we had was a bit like going through customs. "American?" was the inevitable first question. "No, no, Canadian," our over-eager reply. Sometimes our word wasn't good enough and our interrogators wanted proof. We'd pull out our passports for inspection.

On their faces, you could often see a cloud of rage pass over. Women would sometimes let themselves smile. Kids would stop acting like mini-commandos and run off and play.

Don't get me wrong: Canadians aren't loved in Iraq; we just aren't, so far as I could tell, actively loathed.

In 1968, the legendary U.S. labour organizer Cesar Chavez went on a 25-day hunger strike. While depriving himself of food, he condemned abusive conditions suffered by farm workers. The slogan of his historic union drive was “Si se puede!” Yes, we can.

Last week, George Bush went on a four-day bus ride. While stopping for multiple pancake breakfasts, he praised tax cuts and condemned everyone who says American workers need protection in the global economy. His battle cry for laissez fair economics? “Yes, America Can.”

The echo was probably intentional. Bush is so desperate for the Hispanic vote that he has taken to shouting, “Vamos a ganar! We’re going to win!” during stump speeches in Ohio.

Can we please stop calling it a quagmire? The United States isn't mired in a bog or a marsh in Iraq (quagmire's literal meaning); it is free-falling off a cliff. The only question now is: Who will follow the Bush clan off this precipice, and who will refuse to jump?

More and more are, thankfully, choosing the second option. The last month of inflammatory US aggression in Iraq has inspired what can only be described as a mutiny: Waves of soldiers, workers and politicians under the command of the US occupation authority are suddenly refusing to follow orders and abandoning their posts. First Spain announced it would withdraw its troops, then Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan. South Korean and Bulgarian troops were pulled back to their bases, while New Zealand is withdrawing its engineers. El Salvador, Norway, The Netherlands and Thailand will likely be next.

April 9, 2003 was the day Baghdad fell to U.S. forces. One year later, it is rising up against them.

Donald Rumsfeld claims that the resistance is just a few "thugs, gangs and terrorists." This is dangerous, wishful thinking. The war against the occupation is now being fought out in the open, by regular people defending their homes and neighbourhoods — an Iraqi intifada.

"They stole our playground," an eight-year-old boy in Sadr City told me this week, pointing at six tanks parked in a soccer field, next to a rusty jungle gym. The field is a precious bit of green in an area of Baghdad that is otherwise a swamp of raw sewage and uncollected garbage.

Sadr City has seen little of Iraq's multi-billion-dollar "reconstruction," which is partly why Muqtader Sadr and his Mahadi army have so much support here. Before U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer provoked Sadr into an armed conflict by shutting down his newspaper and arresting and killing his deputies, the Mahadi army was not fighting coalition forces, it was doing their job for them.